In honour of #ExpOfCare week I want to share my experience as a patient.
“What do you need today?” my oncologist asked me. A clear signal that my goals would be his that day.
I had breast cancer a few years ago. My children were still small and settling into their first term at primary school. I was determined that my illness would not impact on them any more than it had to.
My wonderful oncologist had promised me he would do everything he could to make my treatment fit my life, not the other way round.
I need to be able to stay upright without vomiting for an hour at 2pm this afternoon I told him. My children had their first assembly and I had to be there.
I knew it was a big ask: it was 10am and I was being rehydrated with IV fluids, having not kept anything down since my last dose of chemotherapy.
Three hours later, having taken every antiemetic known to man, and with a syringe driver delivering a continuous infusion hidden in my handbag I left the hospital.
Because my doctor saw my priorities as his, and recognised me as a person with a life outside the hospital, I wasn’t a cancer patient that day. I was a proud mummy to two amazing children. Upright for a whole hour and not a vomit bowl in sight.
No comments:
Post a Comment